Learning the language of Cape Cod in Cotuit

ELLEN C. CHAHEY PHOTOS THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS – Anne Masquelier used to teach English in her native France, Now, retired to Cotuit, she coaxes flowers to speak their beauty.

Native of France settles in the village

She’s a lady of many languages.

Anne (pronounced AH-nah) Masquelier of Cotuit learned French as her mother tongue in Paris, but her parents sent her to high school in England. “There I learned British English,” she said, but then added with a smile, “now I am learning to speak like an American.”

She taught English to French high schoolers for 40 years. At her retirement, she started looking around in France for a house to buy, but her son, who has lived in New York City for 20 years, talked her into living in the United States so they could see each other more often. “Even when he was little, we were best friends,” she said.

They both had liked Nantucket, but Masquelier didn’t want to live that far at sea. When the 1860 house in Cotuit came on the market in 2009, they bought it together and her son, Guillaume, often comes up from the city to help her with the many projects that an old house and a large yard generate.

Coming up on their to-do list are one job inside and one out, expressive of two non-verbal languages in which Masquelier is also fluent: art and flowers.

The inside project will be to make her an oil-painting studio. “Painting is complete” as a commitment, said Masquelier, who displays in her living room not only her own work but her mother’s landscape of an olive grove in France. Especially for oil painting, which Masquelier favors, there needs to be room to spatter and spill, and even clothes that are dedicated to accept the messiness of the art.

The outside project is a “room” behind an old garage that Masquelier has cleared of underbrush and dead wood to make a place for a hammock. The bower will someday feature plantings, but for now the hammock makes a relaxing place to read and to puzzle over a strange artifact: a chimney that is not attached to the building and doesn’t seem to have any openings in its sides. Guests have speculated that it might have been connected to an underground still.

Masquelier has also bonded with Cotuit itself. She loves the village. “People in the market called me by name from the first day,” she said. “That is very different from France.”

Although she has had to learn to drive to get around in the larger context of the town, in Cotuit she can bike or walk to errands and the beach. She has also become a volunteer for the Barnstable Land Trust’s Eagle Pond property. Each week, she said as she modeled her BLT baseball cap, she walks the pond’s trail to pick up trash and note any problems – such as fallen limbs – that Trust staff need to know about. “People here are more responsible” for the surroundings, she observed. In her native land, she said, “the city does everything for you. Here, people plant flowers [in public areas] for themselves.”

What are the differences that this native Parisian sees between France and the U.S.A.?

Here, she said, “people are so open. There is instant communication, which I really love. It’s easy to talk, which is amazing for a French person.”

She also noted that Americans have an “ease” with talking about their spiritual lives that is unknown in Europe. Her theory is that as an “old continent” with long-established traditions, that part of the world has not encouraged people to share inward thoughts.

The climates of Paris and Cotuit are very different, Masquelier noted. “Paris is always kind of rainy,” she said, “There’ s not so much difference in seasons there.” She admitted to a fantasy familiar to many Cape Codders: to spend the winter somewhere else.

Another difference that may help Americans understand news stories from Europe, Masquelier noted, is that “in France rich people live in cities and poor people live in the suburbs,” a situation which she sees as the opposite of the United States.

She hopes, now that the major chores in her Cotuit home are mostly done, to be able to visit Paris a couple of times a year. “I miss French cheese,” she said.

But at least for the rest of this month, Masquelier will host an old friend from France who will be teaching a series of yoga classes at the Waldorf School (formerly the Cotuit Elementary School). Jean-Marc Zimmer, an Iyengar-certified instructor, will offer workshops on Thursdays August 18, 25, and Sept. 1, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Each three-hour session costs $75. More information about the yoga sessions is available at 917-767-0015.

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